Description:Eight weeks, four themes, four mods, only one team of modders will rise up to claim the throne as the ultimate modding champions of 2017! This is Morrowind Modding Madness, a two month long modding competition starting September 1st and going through to October 31st where modders form teams, compete and vanquish challenges, and rise through the ranks to become the ultimate modding champions of 2017 with all the sweet prizes that entails!

This is modder on modder, mod on mod, gladiatorial creativity as you've never seen it before!

Or well, you have actually, if you were paying any attention to last year's Morrowind Modding Madness, but minor detail! This year's season is gearing up to be just as exciting, so with that out of the way, allow me to introduce the 2017 Morrowind Modding Madness competition, a team-based competition in the vein of the Morrowind Modathons but with a twist where modders have to form teams and face bi-weekly modding challenges by coming up with, designing, and releasing an entire mod in only two week's time to make it to the top by Halloween (October 31st)

I've included a breakdown of how this competition works, how you can register and signup for the competition, as well as potential prizes down below.

1. Form and Register Your Modding TeamsThis a team-based modding competition, that means you need to form a modding team and register it in order to enter the competition, and trust me, with the way this competition is setup, you're going to want to have at least one teammate to work with.

Now modding teams can be composed of a minimum of two modders and a maximum of four modders, and ideally, you'll want to gather a team of modders from different fields in order to make the most creative mod possible. Making a quest is always a good way to boost your mod, but what if one of the opposing teams has a talented modeler? Certainly you can outmuch their innovation by just using vanilla assets, but do you really want to take that chance? Likewise, a professional scripter will make your mods come alive, and that might well give you the edge in this creative battle of wits and madness. Whoever you pick to be on your team, you'll need to work together, collaborate, plan out your mods, and successfully release them on time in order to win and claim the top prize.

In order to register your modding team for the competition, you need to first make sure you've got a list of your fellow modders who you want to team up with and who have agreed to work with you, then you need to come up with a team name (nothing offensive, I will rename your team if you submit something inappropriate!) and submit that team name along with your list of modders in a post either here or on one of our forum threads at Morrowind Nexus, Great House Fliggerty, r/tes3mods, or the Morrowind Modding Showcases Forums by NO LATER than the end of the day September 1st. New teams CANNOT apply for the competition after September 1st, that's when the competition starts and we need to have a firm list of participating teams by then!

Once you've got your modding team assembled, be ready to start on September 1st with the first wave of modding challenges!

2. Meet the Challenges and Rise Through the RanksIn order to make it to the top and be declared the winners, each team must survive a number of modding challenges. Unlike last year, you'll get two weeks to meet each challenge, so you'll have an entire 14 days from when a challenge theme is announced to build and release a mod that fits that theme. Now for the second big change here, these themes aren't based on categories but rather general themes like factions, architectural styles, or play-styles. So one week might be Daedric-themed mods, another Sea-themed mods or Telvanni mods or Necromancer mods or so on and so forth. The theme will only be revealed the day before the challenge starts, so each modding team only has two weeks to prepare, build and release a mod of their own making. With such a short window of mod development, teams will need to strategize, either join together and collaborate on one mod to get it done faster, or divide off and build individual mods to try and guess the upcoming themes ahead of time and get more mods finished.

In total, there's thirteen different potential categories that could be used in the competition. These categories are randomly selected right before each challenge, and since there's only four challenges to this event, that means only four of these categories will be used, and not even I will know which ones that will be ahead of time. The potential categories are as follows: Daedric, Redoran, Telvanni, Hlaalu, Dwemer, Necromancer, Temple, Imperial, Mage, Warrior, Thief, Sixth House and Sea mods. These are all extremely broad and open-ended categories, so you just need to make sure your mods at least partially meet the category definitions for each week.

Now in order for your mods to count towards the competition, when you release a mod for one of the challenges, remember to include a line at the top that says 'Part of the Morrowind Modding Madness Competition' and a line right below that with your team name like "Team Cliffracer" or something like that. Your mod will automatically be entered into the competition and be sent to our judging panel for scoring. And you can upload your mods to both Morrowind Nexus or Great House Fliggerty, both sites will work fine for mod releases.

At the end of each challenge, all mods submitted by each team will be featured in one big weekly wrap-up video on the channel, so all mods will receive equal attention on the channel, regardless of where you post your mods for the competition.

Keep in mind, you MUST release your mods by the end of each challenge's 14 day period to be counted towards the competition, we will not accept late entries! There are definite deadlines here!

3. Earn Points from the JudgesThis is another area where this year's competition is a lot different from the 2016 season of Morrowind Modding Madness. Unlike last year where we had a ranked scoring system using both judge-based and popular vote scores, we're completely doing away with the popular vote this year due to just how inaccurate it can sometimes be. Instead, we'll be doing a complete judge-based scoring system this year, with scores tilted in favor of creativity. At the end of each challenge, judges will go through and play each mod for the next 7 to 10 days, and the results of their scoring will be posted publically, so teams will know how they're ranking so far in the competition. Each mod contributes a bit to the team's ranked score, so if a team has one fantastic mod, but didn't meet any of the other challenges, they could still lose the competition as a whole, hence collaboration and working together will be key to winning victory.

And to go a bit into some detail here, the total score that each mod can receive for the competition is 10 points. Hypothetically, if you release one amazing mod that everyone loves, your maximum score is 10 points, but another team could release two semi-good mods that each get six points each and they'd technically be ahead of you in score, so the goal isn't just to release one great mod, it's to make sure you manage your time well, meet the themes, and release a lot of good mods over in order to stay competitive with the other teams.

Here's the criteria that each judge will be looking at for each mod:

1. 2 Points for Mod Functionality (Mod does what it's supposed to and is also clean of GMSTs/Dirty Refs)3. 5 Points for Mod Innovation (Is the mod original and creative?)4. 3 Points for Judge Preference (Did the judge enjoy/like the mod?)

4. PrizesNow let's talk about prizes, because I know you guys love prizes. Besides the fame and glory of coming out ahead of your fellow modding teams in gladiatorial creativity, each team that gets the highest mod score each week will get a set of Steam and Indie game prizes that they can choose from, and the grand prize winners will get a ton of Steam and Indie games as well, and not only that, they'll be declared the Ultimate Modding Champions of 2017 with all the bragging rights that entails!

To be sure, 2017 has been a great year as far as Morrowind modding is concerned so far, with the community on track to release nearly 600 mods by the end of the year, and let's not forget all those province mods and Morrowind multiplayer that also saw a release this year. Things are looking pretty great right now, so let's keep up the momentum with another exciting competition!

Best of luck to all of the contestants, I hope this competition can be a fun and exciting event for all of you, and may the best modding team win! Happy Modding and May The Best Games Never Die!